High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! StarTropics is an action-adventure video game released by Nintendo in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Unlike most of Nintendo`s games, it was never released or intended to be released in Japan. It was released only in North America and Europe, although designed by Japanese designers living in the United States. It was produced, written and directed by Genyo Takeda of Nintendo Integrated Research & Development (which also developed the Punch-Out!! series). The game was added to the North American Virtual Console on January 7, 2008, and the PAL region`s on January 11.